


Balance

by Hours_Gone_By



Series: AU Yeah AUgust 2019 [8]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe – Supernatural Elements, Bodyswap, Deal with a Devil, Divination, Gen, Iacon City, Iacon Mechaforensics Division, Investigations, Murder, Murder Mystery, Police, Ritualized Murder, Serial Killers, Supernatural Elements, au yeah august
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 20:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20395504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hours_Gone_By/pseuds/Hours_Gone_By
Summary: After making a deal with a literal servant of Unicron to help solve a series of ritualized murders in Iacon, Bluestreak finds himself in an unexpected place.





	Balance

**Author's Note:**

> Day #11 - Bodyswap

In recent kilo-cycles, all of Iacon City had been gripped by fear in the wake of a series of ritualistic murders in the western part of the city. Each murder was more shocking and grotesque than the last, and they all seemed to have an aspect of Unicron worship to them. Corporal Bluestreak of the Iacon Mechaforensics Division had been dispatched to interview Jazz, a self-named 'broker' who made deals with mecha on behalf of his master Unicron. While Jazz had at first refused to help unless Bluestreak made a deal with him, he'd relented when Bluestreak had returned with crime scene photos. It wasn't the horror of the crimes that changed Jazz's mind, it was that he recognized someone was killing followers of Unicron. Jazz had _not_ been happy that his clientele was being killed off – and he'd been even less happy that he'd virtually had to ask Bluestreak to ask him for help.

Apparently, even chaos had rules, though Jazz called them patterns, and one of those rules was that he couldn't interfere in mortal affairs unless he were asked. So, Bluestreak had asked, and Jazz had been forced to accept to get the vengeance he wanted, even though he clearly hadn't liked doing so.

Well, Bluestreak wasn't exactly pleased that he had to work with, quite literally, an agent of Unicron, himself. Jazz was alleged to be the spawn of the Unmaker himself, a demon in the shape of a mech – something Bluestreak was inclined to think was more accurate than not. Even the priests wouldn't touch him and, rumour had it, nothing short of a Prime would be able to harm him. No Prime since Nova had taken any action or even so much as commented on him.

When Bluestreak had taken the news back to Captain Flatfoot at the precinct, it had won him a whole klik of unprecedented silence.

"So…he'll do it?" Flatfoot had finally asked hesitantly.

"Because he wants the killer to stop murdering his clients," Bluestreak reminded him. "But yes."

"What's it going to cost us?" Flatfoot wanted to know.

"The department?" Bluestreak asked. "Nothing. The price is being able to capture the killer and keep his client base from dying."

"That's all? " Flatfoot asked skeptically. "Just to help catch the killer?"

"That's all he wants from the department," Bluestreak confirmed. Flatfoot still seemed unsure, but he approved Jazz's involvement anyway. Bluestreak wondered if his captain hadn't picked up on the unspoken implication Jazz might want something from _Bluestreak_ or if he had and had decided it was better simply not to ask.

Bluestreak wished he could talk to Prowl, but the mech who had been his friend since their batch had onlined was across the planet as part of Sentinel Prime's honour guard and couldn't be contacted for anything but an emergency. Bluestreak wanting advice from someone more spiritual than himself wasn't one. He'd just have to manage this on his own and hope things didn't go sideways on him.

The first trick was, of course, figuring out how to find the killer. The IMD had been working on it nonstop and hadn't had any luck, but Jazz was confident in his ability to do so. Bluestreak, much as he didn't like it, had to go back to Jazz's office to oversee and record the ritual for evidence. Flatfoot was desperate, not stupid, and he knew he'd need to prove Jazz's usefulness to someone at some point, even if this didn't go to trial. Bluestreak believed in justice and would do his best to bring the offender to court to answer for his crimes, but he also knew he couldn't guarantee the same from Jazz. Bluestreak was also practical: a trial was the preferred outcome, but they were dealing with a vicious serial killer, and it might well not be the one he would get. Adding Jazz to the mix just tipped the balance that much further out of justice's favour, but – but! – if he were successful at least the murders would stop. No matter what they'd done, past or present, Bluestreak didn’t believe anyone deserved to die the way these victims had.

Jazz's receptionist was once again absent – or perhaps nonexistent for all Bluestreak knew – and the clean, bright, modern lobby with its contents grouped together in composite numbers was empty. The abstract sculpture of the partly-demolished temple still unnerved from the corner of the optic. The purple light under the base seemed to gutter like a dying flame. Bluestreak resolutely turned his back on it.

"I can hear you out there," Jazz sang from inside his office. "Come on in, Corporal. I'm just about to start getting ready."

Bluestreak wasn't comfortable in the office, but he was admittedly curious about what, exactly, entailed 'getting ready' for demonic divination, so he went to Jazz's office. On the desk, the bowl full of disturbingly spark-like things seemed to glow.

"Ritual room's this way," Jazz said, indicating the direction with a wave of one hand. "C'mon."

Jazz's ritual room was – the only word Bluestreak could think to apply was 'sparse.' The walls were bare, with only a set of utilitarian shelves against the right-hand wall holding supplies and equipment. It was well lit and in the centre was a plain table made of an odd-looking material.

"'S called wood," Jazz explained, rapping the table with his knuckles as he passed. "From an organic world. Hard to come by on Cybertron but it's non-conductive which is useful, at times."

"Glass is non-conductive," Bluestreak pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's also reflective unless it's frosted or something and that can cause other problems depending on what you're doing." Jazz glanced back at Bluestreak over his shoulder, a little smirk playing around the corner of his mouth. "Magic lessons are extra, but…"

"I'll look it up on the DataNet later," Bluestreak replied. Or ask Prowl when he got back. Jazz wasn't the only source of information.

Jazz shrugged. "Suit yourself. Now where – ah!" He flipped a narrow tube of the kind artists used to hold vinyl canvases before they were framed and up and caught it in his other hand, swiping a crystal pendulum from the shelf while the tube was in the air.

The tube turned out to hold a map, drawn on a material that Bluestreak told himself was some kind of cloth. Jazz spread it out over the table and dangled the crystal over it.

"Pallomancy?" Bluestreak asked.

"Hm, you know a thing or two," Jazz said approvingly. "Yeah. The pendulum will point to the location of the subject of the divination. Now keep quiet for a moment, I have to concentrate."

Bluestreak watched while Jazz – well, didn't seem to do much of anything. The other mech hummed quietly, and the hand that held the pendulum was so unnaturally still he had to have locked his joints. Bluestreak had heard that the more powerful the magic-worker, the less they needed to do in terms of gestures, sounds, and components. Jazz's actions might not be visually impressive, but a chill still went through Bluestreak as the pendulum began to move.

The chain was flexible – he'd seen it coiled on the shelf – but as it moved it stayed perfectly straight, drawing Jazz's hand across the map. Trick chains existed, but Bluestreak severely doubted this was one. Jazz didn't _need_ tricks, and in this instance, he didn't seem to want them, either. Not if he were sincere about wanting the killer off the streets so his clientele would stop being targets.

Jazz let himself be moved by the pendulum until it came to a stop, hanging straight down beneath his hand again and pointing to an area where it looked like a sigil had been carefully scraped away.

"Well, well," Jazz said softly and unhappily. "Ain't that interesting. Used to be a kind of a meeting place for the boss's followers but it got abandoned a while back."

"Why was it abandoned?"

"Bunch of genuinely devout mecha moved into the area. Devoted to your guy, not mine." Jazz wrapped the pendulum's chain around his fingers with a quick flick of his wrist. "Made the area a bit too hot. But it was a pretty popular spot before then."

"Before when?" Bluestreak asked.

Jazz looked up at him, and Bluestreak did not like the way the light played off his visor. "Before the murders began."

"And just after the genuinely devout began to move in," Bluestreak murmured thoughtfully.

"Yup." Jazz leaned back, crossing his arms. The crystal pendulum swung from his hand on a short length of chain, glittering. "And it doesn't take much for the wrong kind of devotee to leap the line into fanaticism, does it?"

"No," Bluestreak agreed absently, focused on the problem at hand. A thought occurred to him. "Do you have many problems with that with – um – your boss's followers?"

"You make yourself too obvious about following Unicron," said the mech with the expensive and publicly accessible office who brokered deals on Unicron's behalf, "tends to get you taken down pretty quick. Unless you're me, of course." A quick flash of a genuine smile. "I'm exceptional."

Bluestreak chose to let that one go. (The worst part was, it was true, in the sense that Jazz was an exception. It didn't make that a positive thing, though.)

"Is this where the killer is operating from," Bluestreak asked, "or just where they are right now?"

"Operating from," was the reply. "Didn't want to spend cycles chasing this mech around. I want them gone. I divined where they spend most of their time."

So, if not where they lived, then where they worked or hid. Someplace they were guaranteed to come back to, anyway. Bluestreak overlaid an image capture of Jazz's map with his own map of the city, acquiring GPS coordinates and an address while simultaneously filling out a request for surveillance. He packaged those up and sent them off to Flatfoot.

"Did you learn anything else?" Bluestreak asked.

"Not yet but I've got some suspicions." Jazz pressed a couple of fingers to the scraped-away sigil. "Just a – there." The outline of a square, glowing sickly purple, surrounded the remains of the sigil. "Yeah, there are some defences up. Decent enough."

"Unless you're the one getting past them?" Bluestreak guessed.

Jazz chuckled. "Now you're getting it. They're a bit tricky, and the caster's going to know when they come down – nothing to be done about that. Can always bypass them – I can, anyway."

"Any way to bring me along when you do that?" Bluestreak asked. He hoped the answer was 'yes' – he didn't think he was going to get an arrest if the suspect wound up alone with Jazz.

"Well, you'd need an aspect of power – my power would be best 'cause we'd read as the same mech. Less likely to set off the defences or alert the caster that way." Jazz looked at Bluestreak consideringly, an almost teasing smirk at the corner of his mouth. "But how can you get my power…?

Bluestreak refused to rise to the bait as Jazz trailed off. Jazz waited expectantly for a half klik then gave in with a little pout.

"Fine. It's not even that hard. I'll just switch structures with you."

"That's 'not that hard?'" Bluestreak asked skeptically.

Jazz grinned and wiggled his fingers at Bluestreak. "Magic, mech! And don't worry about the 'taint of dark magic' or whatever slag. Magic's just magic – it's a tool, all in how you use it."

"Won't the medallions in my armour be a problem for you?" Bluestreak asked. They _should _be. They were _supposed_ to be – and Bluestreak didn't dare mention the protective spells tattooed, so very carefully, into his protoform and hidden below his plating. He didn't want Jazz to know all his secrets.

"They're good medallions," Jazz observed. "Really high quality. Whoever blessed and installed those for you did an excellent job. Don't want you to think otherwise."

Bluestreak would pass the compliment on to Prowl later, he guessed. "But - ?"

"But they won't even tickle me," Jazz said bluntly. "Don't feel bad. I only start being affected at, oh, Prime level. 'Sides, it's not like I'm going to be exposed to them for long."

"So you'll swap our bodies," Bluestreak said, trying not to think about what he was saying. "But it's temporary."

"Only as long as we need to take care of the problem," Jazz promised. "Not enough time to get into trouble. Well. Not serious trouble anyway. You'll have access to whatever power's stored in my structure, but it'll probably only be good for a shot or two if you need to use it– and you're no pro so you're going to use up more power than I would. Bet on one. Oh, and I won't 'face anyone or get overcharged or anything like that while I'm in your structure. I expect the same in return. I mean, unless I'm reading you wrong and you're into that."

"I am not," Bluestreak said firmly. Flatfoot messaged Bluestreak back with the notice that surveillance had been assigned and would report back on any movement they saw in the area. "My captain is sending officers to monitor the location now. We'll hear when the suspect is in the building."

"Problem with that," Jazz pointed out, managing to roll the map back up one-handed and stuff it back in the tube. "You don't know what the suspect looks like and you can't sense magic. Could be anybody going in there – and while you're not sure, mecha are dying. Dying pretty bad from what you showed me. You really want to wait?"

Bluestreak was reluctant to swap bodies with Jazz, but he was even more unwilling to let more mecha die if he could prevent it, followers of Unicron or not.

"No."

That was how Bluestreak found himself standing in an alley with his optics off and Jazz standing at his back.

"Keep my optics off once we're switched," Jazz instructed. "It's going to feel strange, and it _will _freak you out if you see yourself first thing."

"How many times have you done this?" Bluestreak wanted to know.

"Oh, two or three times," Jazz answered casually. "Still a little weird for me so it's going to be a _lot _weird for you."

"Alright, well, just tell me when you're about to do it," Bluestreak said, trying to brace himself.

"Heh. Nope."

"Wha -?"

Bluestreak's startled question was interrupted by a sudden, shocking feeling of – he'd have called it cold if he'd had sensors to feel it with, void if he'd had any measure of space or distance. Then it was gone, and he was embodied again, feeling dizzy, disoriented.

"What?"

The message 'OPTICS OFF' flashed across his – Jazz's – his – HUD, which was more complicated than his own. Extended, with all the filters and vision modes Bluestreak was accustomed to, and more. The balance of the structure was different too, without extended doors like Bluestreak was used to. It didn't put him off balance, of course, because this structure was calibrated to move without them, but he was still aware of it, just enough for it to be off-putting. On top of all of that, he felt something, almost like an electrical current along his struts. That must be what Jazz had meant by 'power stored in my structure.' Bluestreak knew, somehow, that all he had to do was reach for it, will it to do what he wanted and it _would_.

He killed that processing thread ruthlessly. It wasn’t his to use, certainly not without Jazz's permission. Even if it was…tempting.

"Steady," his own voice said. "Keep your optics off. I know what you're feeling but don't use it. Not yet."

"What is it?" Bluestreak whispered.

"Magic."

"No, it can't – that's too _simple_ a word."

"Well." That smirking tone did _not _belong in his voice! "I didn't say it was mortal magic, now, did I?"

"I – "

"I'll tell you more afterward. C'mon, let's get going. I'm guessing you don't want to do this any longer than you have to."

Jazz maneuvered them so that he was still behind Bluestreak and they left the alley, but not by exiting into the street. The surveillance team hadn’t reported anyone entering or leaving the building so far, but Jazz's divination had been used to permit Bluestreak entry under probable cause. Jazz's presence was another matter. He'd eventually been brought in under an obscure law that allowed magical consultants to act as deputies with limited power during occult investigations. Seeing as Jazz had both performed the divination and was as good an authority as they were going to get on Unicron, he was permitted to accompany Bluestreak.

Bluestreak and Jazz made their entry through a side door. Later, the doors would be marked with notices of entry and anyone attempting to enter would be intercepted by unmarked Enforcers waiting outside. Bluestreak just hoped they didn't wind up scaring away their subject instead.

Property records indicated the building had a deca-vorn's worth of unpaid back taxes and no registered owner. It was supposed to be abandoned, and there was no record of anyone using it as living space, a business, or anything else. They did not have a name for their suspect, or even a description. That would have to come later.

Despite the building supposedly being empty, there were clear signs of use. Some of it was older, but there were more recent signs as well. A half-drunk glass of coolant that hadn't yet begun to evaporate, a datapad carelessly tossed down on a table with its ready light still glowing. The place didn't feel abandoned, it felt like someone had left recently and was expecting to come back at any moment. A strange, heavy, feeling lay over the whole place, making Bluestreak even more uneasy.

Bluestreak forced himself to go through the building calmly, not rush so they could re-cross the boundary spells, and he could get swapped back into his own body. _Looking _at his structure walking around without him in it was disturbing in a way he couldn't quite articulate. As for the building, someone was squatting there, that much was clear, and they could probably at least arrest them for trespassing. But there was nothing visible that said either 'serial killer' or 'religious fanatic,' as useful as an altar with trophies would have been.

As Bluestreak looked around, unfamiliar apps fed data to the HUD he wore and strange widgets seemed to be monitoring things he didn't understand.

"The – purple square thing," he finally said, hoping Jazz understood what he meant. "What's that for?"

"Y'know, I was just thinking how weird it is, walking around without that? It gives you a baseline reading on the amount of magic around. Why?" Jazz asked curiously. "What's it doing?"

"Uh – kind of…pulsing?"

"Changing colour?"

"No."

"Yeah, that's just background magic. No increase, no decrease." Jazz looked closely at something in an empty box that, like others stacked with it, was turned on its side with the opening toward the room to make shelves. "Well, that's weird."

"What?" Bluestreak went over to see what Jazz was looking at, still trying to ignore the fact that he was looking at his own body. He wanted to pretend he was looking at a batch-mate since they were all pretty similar, but it didn't help. Resolutely, he stared over his own shoulder instead.

"Bunch of books that're all about the number one, how significant one is, that kind of thing." Jazz crouched a little to look at the next shelf. "More of the same, plus some stuff on achieving spiritual balance."

One, neither prime nor composite, was the number of balance, Bluestreak remembered.

"You think the suspect is dedicated to balance?" Bluestreak asked, frowning. "But then wouldn't he be killing an equal number of the followers of Primus?" Or a higher number, since Bluestreak knew perfectly well Cybertron's population wasn't evenly divided between followers of Unicron and followers of Primus.

"I think if you're killing mecha out of some weird kind of fanaticism your reasoning's going to be pretty twisty, to begin with." Jazz stepped away from the cabinet, overly careful to not strike Bluestreak with a door, and kept searching. "But it ain't evidence, not yet. Let's keep going."

Bluestreak kept searching, hoping for something that could get him a stronger warrant, give him a reason to bring the suspect in for questioning. The last room they searched was the rearmost room on the main floor, which contained the door to the basement. The nano-klik Bluestreak looked at it through Jazz's visor, the monitor he'd called Jazz's attention to before changed colours.

"The monitor I asked about before just changed to bright green," he informed Jazz.

"High concentration of magic," Jazz said, looking over the door. "That's probably what you want to see – meaning it's locked to the Pit and back."

"Probably." Bluestreak plugged a lockpicking tool into the lock panel and let it run its decryption program, then stood to one side as the door slid open to avoid any nasty surprises. There was a short ramp beyond, and the monitor kept getting brighter and brighter as they descended it. There were no lights, but Bluestreak turned on Jazz's headlamps, and behind him, Jazz did the same with Bluestreak's, lighting the room.

This was what they'd been looking for. There weren't any grisly trophies, thank the Matrix, but there were pictures of the victims, occult tools, a terminal that Bluestreak presumed had DataNet access, and a table made of non-conducting material. A ritual room, then, like the one he'd seen in Jazz's offices earlier, though made by someone with fewer funds available.

"I think we found our mech," Jazz said, walking a slow circuit of the room and carefully examining it. "You're won't be able to get your team in here without breaking the barrier and alerting the mech, though."

Bluestreak was already on comms with Flatfoot. "We'll wait until the suspect returns and apprehend them after they've entered the building. Then we can – " Jazz flung up a hand and Bluestreak stopped speaking immediately, breaking off his comm with Flatfoot and devoting all his attention to the scenario at hand.

It felt like half his sensors were missing, but he knew, somehow, that there was someone behind him and to his right. In front of him, Jazz was eerily still. A text popped up on Bluestreak's borrowed HUD.

_That one shot I mentioned you having? Visualize gathering power in your hand, feel it sharpen and focus, and fire it at these coordinates:_ _@44.6470128,-63.5848097._

Bluestreak obeyed, getting the strange sensation of both something and nothing in his hand. _How will I know when?_

_You'll know._

That was less than helpful but short nano-kliks later Bluestreak just _knew _he was ready, and threw – the only word he could think applied – the something-nothing at the coordinates Jazz had given him.

As the-the projectile, he supposed, left his hand he spun to face the target and got a vague, shadowy impression of a mech darting through a door that had been invisibly set in the wall. Bluestreak raced over to it, slapping his borrowed palm on the wall just a pico-klik too late to stop it from closing all the way. He hit the wall again in frustration, then pushed off with a sigh.

"How did we miss that?" Bluestreak asked. He wasn't addressing Jazz specifically, but the other mech answered anyway.

"Mech was stealthing using magic. I couldn't pick it up, and you don't know what to look for because we swapped structures."

Bluestreak sighed. "Well, I guess there's no point in staying switched. The suspect knows we're here whether the barrier's been breached or not. Switch us back."

He'd half expected Jazz to debate, or tease, or make some kind of offer trying to tempt Bluestreak with something, but that didn't happen. Maybe Jazz wanted back in his own structure, or perhaps Bluestreak's words counted as revocation of consent. It could be both. Apparently, the swap wouldn't work if both parties weren't in agreement with it and Bluestreak knew Jazz didn't like how much control that gave the Enforcer. Too bad.

Once again Bluestreak was pulled into that void, then felt dizzy and disoriented, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been the first time. He was back in his own structure, HUD and balance familiar again, and that strange current was gone.

Thank Primus. Bluestreak _never_ wanted to do that again!

"So, what now?" Jazz asked, stretching. "Pretty sure the mech ain't coming back here."

"No," Bluestreak agreed, already getting a sinking feeling about how this was going to go over at the precinct. He glanced over at the ritual space and the terminal. "At least we have the evidence," he said, already comming for a full evidentiary team.

"And me," Jazz put in, though he didn't sound pleased about it. "I'm bound by the agreement we made until the killer's caught. So long as I want that to happen, anyway."

So, until the killer was caught or ran out of Jazz's clientele to murder. Bluestreak almost asked what happened when Jazz decided he didn't want, or couldn't be bothered trying to catch the killer anymore. Almost. He didn't think he'd like the answer.

"Then I suppose we'd better hurry," Bluestreak said instead and wished he had any idea whatsoever of how to do that.


End file.
